An enthusiasm for authoritarian mobs over constitutional institutions

From The Supreme Court's Decision Is a Huge Win for the Constitution by  David Harsanyi.  He makes a point which seems basic and yet is in evidence everywhere in partisan debate.  We have a constitutional republic established to protect citizens and their individual rights via three sets of checks and balance between branches of government (legislative, judicial, and executive) as well as three sets of checks and balance via Federal, State, and Local governance.

The design was intended to protect the individual from overweening and capricious government force as well as from mob passions.  This form of government has been astonishingly successful.  Richest large nation (4% of the world's population, 23% of the world's productivity), most diverse nation, most innovative nation, oldest and third oldest political parties, oldest written constitution, etc.  

Regardless of one's policy preferences on any given issue, you have to navigate the three branches and the three levels.  One wing of one of our two parties, if not the entire party, increasingly seems to focus solely on whether any given action or decision advances their desire or not, regardless of the constitution and the branches and levels of government.  There is a hunger for authoritarian power and disdain for constitutional institutions.

Harsanyi puts it nicely.

The modern left doesn't even bother pretending they believe the Supreme Court has a responsibility to act as a separate branch of government and adjudicate the constitutionality of law. Rather than even ostensibly offering legal reasons for their ire, Democrats simply demand the Supreme Court uphold public sentiment (or, rather what they claim is public sentiment), even though SCOTUS exists to ignore those pressures. The fact that that attitude has congealed as the norm in one of our major political parties does not bode well for the future of the Republic.

SCOTUS, State authority, Electoral College - these and many other institutions are supported or dismissed merely based on policy synchronicity rather than respect for their constitutional roles.  A too large a wedge of the chattering class are committed to authoritarianism rather than constitutionalism.